1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a gas discharge display device for driving a display panel of what is called a plasma display panel (PDP) type and displaying graphic characters and forms by lighting up individual points in gas with which a region between a front and rear panels thereof is filled.
2. Description of The Related Art
A typical conventional gas-discharge display device provided with a large number of cathodes which are serially discharged by performing a scanning discharge (an auxiliary discharge) is disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 61-30279 Official Gazette. Further, another conventional gas-discharge display device is disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 62-12623 Official Gazette. In this conventional gas-discharge display device, a group of first electrodes serving as anodes and a group of second electrodes acting as cathodes are provided. Further, a discharge cell is provided at each solid crossing portion of a first and second electrodes. Moreover, a discharging space is partitioned by long and thin dielectric barriers each intervening between neighboring first electrodes. Furthermore, third electrodes covered with a dielectric layer are provided with the side of the group of second electrodes. In case of this gas-discharge display device, an electric potential of a third electrode corresponding to a discharge cell to be discharged is maintained to be lower than an electric potential of the cathodes, while an electric potential of the remaining third electrodes is kept higher than the electric potential of the cathodes.
The above-mentioned conventional gas-discharge display device has an advantage in that the number of elements of a driving circuit for performing a scanning discharge (i.e., a priming discharge or an auxiliary discharge) can be reduced, but has a drawback in that sufficient reliability in regard to a scanning discharge function is not obtained.
Thus, in Japanese Patent Application No. 63-312317, the inventor of the present invention has proposed a gas-discharge display device wherein a negative pulse is applied to a third electrode in a vertical blanking interval in which a serial scanning of a group of second electrodes is not performed, so that an electric charge is stored in a dielectric layer and further a scanning discharge (i.e., a priming discharge or an auxiliary discharge) is caused between this electric charge and a second electrode. This gas-discharge display device can obtain high reliability with regard to a priming effect, as well as an image display with a high contrast. This gas-discharge display device, however, has encountered a problem that a false discharge is liable to occur in a discharge cell corresponding to an electrode which is first scanned after a vertical blanking interval.